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2015 San Francisco District Winner and Western Regional Encouragement Award Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Russian-American Mezzo-Soprano Mariya Kaganskaya is currently a Marion Roose Pullin Studio Artist at Arizona Opera, where she appears in the 2016-17 Season as Third Wood Sprite (Rusalka), Suzuki (Madama Butterfly), and Tisbe (La Cenerentola). In Summer 2017, she returns as a second-year Apprentice Singer to the Santa Fe Opera, where she will premiere the role of Teacher in The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs and cover the role of Amelfa in The Golden Cockerel.

A former Mosher Studio Artist at Opera Santa Barbara and Young Artist at the iSing International Festival, as well as an alumna of the OperaWorks Advanced Artist Program and the Russian Opera Workshop at the Academy of Vocal Arts, Mariya most recently performed roles including Hostess (Boris Godunov, New Opera NYC and The Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Scenes), Marta (Iolanta, New Opera NYC), La Nourrice (Médée, Mills Music Now/Opera Parallèle), Mexican Woman (A Streetcar Named Desire, Opera Santa Barbara), and Olga (Eugene Onegin, Russian Opera Workshop), as well as Dorabella (Così fan tutte), Ottavia (L’incoronazione di Poppea), Dinah (Trouble in Tahiti), Julia Bertram (Mansfield Park), Mystery, Summer, Chinese Man, and Mopsa (The Fairy Queen), and the title role of Serse at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she earned her MM (’15) and PGD (’16) under the tutelage of Catherine Cook.

“Her warm mezzo tones definitely captured the rhetoric of the English text, and I must confess an inability to say whether she was equally attentive to the Russian portion. (I have every reason to believe she was!)” ~ Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio, October 2016